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Old 25th Aug 2010, 11:52 am   #1
bschani
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Default Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask but my father has a collection of analogue radios and tape decks that are currently stored in a cellar. My question is: Does a damp room cause any damage to these types of radios?

Any advice most welcome.

Thanks.
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 12:33 pm   #2
David G4EBT
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

I'd say that the short answer is 'how can it not do'?

Radios and tape decks have many components made of ferrous metal, some of which may be nickel or zinc plated, but not all. Tape deck mechanisms will have several small springs too, which won't fare too well in damp conditions.

We often see pictures on the forum of the effects of dampness on rust-ravaged radio chassis, though admittedly some may have been stored in that condition for years.

I supposed to an extent it depends on whether they're stored in boxes, with other protection, or if they're just stacked on shelves. A visual examination as a 'health check' is perhaps called for, by removing the covers of equipment, but not in the cellar - in a warm dry environment.

That's my two pennyworth.

David
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 12:39 pm   #3
Herald1360
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

In a word, yes!

Rust, corrosion, mildew, rot will all feature to a greater or lesser extent, plus anything more insidious like moisture ingress to insulation, capacitors etc etc.

Problems may be slowed down a bit by generally lower, stable temperatures, but exist they will
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 12:40 pm   #4
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Yes it will damage them. You could consider using a dehumidifier but note that these don't work below a certain ambient temperature so it might be too cold in winter for it to be effective.
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 12:52 pm   #5
paulsherwin
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Cellars vary a lot, but rusting will result in most cases. There may be problems with mould and wood decay if the cellar is at all damp.
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 1:07 pm   #6
threeseven
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Speaking from personal and the experience of others, any electronic, electromechanical, mechanical etc equipment that is stored in damp conditions WILL be damaged to some extent.
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 2:02 pm   #7
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Hi,

For most metals, water + air = corrosion.

Ferrous metals rust (control shafts, motor shafts, bearings, transformer laminations, chassis etc.) How severely depends on the quality of the metal; mild steel can corrode rather badly whereas higher grades (on motor shafts, say) may end up with only a superficial discolouration which polishes off.

Aluminium (capacitor cans, some chassis components) develop a white powdery corrosion and can end up severely pitted and sometimes holed.

Copper and copper alloys (brass, bronze) go green; in extreme cases I've encountered insulated wiring where the wire inside has completely oxidised. In two instances now, I've encountered open-circuit loudspeakers; either the voice coil or the fine lead-outs from it have corroded.

I've unwound the odd open-circuit transformer and found breaks in windings caused by corrosion. The finer windings suffer most, output transformer primaries and HT secondaries may be found o/c whereas the thicker LT windings and output transformer secondaries remain intact. Damp can also cause insulation to fail.

Many of the glues used for bonding plywood, joints, veneers and coverings are water-soluble. Plywood delaminates, joints fall apart, veneers and coverings come adrift.

Some of the paints used on tuning scales are badly affected by damp; I once saw a fifties bakelite Ekco set where most of the print had fallen off the back of the scale and was lying in the bottom of the set!

On the other hand, many components are impervious to damp ingress. Valves are sealed up in glass, many types of resistor and capacitor are encapsulated in epoxy or sealed inside metal or ceramic cases with glass or epoxy seals. Some transformers are vacuum-impregnated with wax or varnish, or sealed in an oil-filled can. (I swear that some WWII military equipment would survive six months at the bottom of a lake...)

In spite of this, it can take a lot to render something unrestorable. Some of us like a challenge. In extreme cases, a pile of bits of wood which used to be a cabinet can be used as a pattern to make a new one. New chassis can be made, using a badly-corroded one as a template.

Much depends on exactly how damp conditions are and how much the temperature varies. Repeatedly being cooked then frozen year-on-year in a leaky shed is going to do more damage than storage in a cellar where the temperature remains cool and reasonably constant.

Regards, Kat
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 2:23 pm   #8
Peter.N.
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

The cheapest way of preventing further deterioration would be to remove them, dry them out thoroughly then seal them in airtight plastic bags, possibly those for storing clothes that you can suck the oir out with a vacuum cleaner - if you can still get them.

Peter
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 2:59 pm   #9
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Define "damp". You need to keep an eye on the relative humidity and the dew point.

I have a thermometer in my cellar which measures humidity and calculates the dew point - it cost about £20 from CPC. As long as things are above the dew point, you won't get condensation forming on them.

This isn't the whole story because many things are hygroscopic and will absorb moisture from the air. Paper is a good example; after a few days down there, copier paper becomes noticeably "limp". By way of an example, I was fixing a laser printer a few months back - the next way, I put the last of the covers on and did a final test print - as the paper disappeared into the printer, plumes of smoke engulfed me. This was simply the moisture in the paper, that had only been down there overnight, turning to steam in the fuser unit! The print quality was unaffected, surprisingly

Wood is also hygroscopic, and changes size by a surprising amount - around 10% in my experience. When I'm building things, I tend to bring the work upstairs overnight. Of course, a finished cabinet should be reasonably well sealed, but I'd still be cautious... The prospect of rot breaking out is possible, but if the humidity is constantly high enough to facilitate this, I would suggest that your collection is the least of your worries!

Good ventilation is really important, but this does mean that a dehumidifier is likely to be a waste of time as it will be trying to dry out the entire planet!

Funnily enough, the humidity in my cellar is highest in the summer because the outside air is warm and humid, but when cooled by 10 degrees or so when entering the cellar, the relative humidity goes up to 70-80%. The contribution to the humidity from damp walls and floor is relatively minor - indeed if anything, the damp in the walls is mostly coming from the air (the bottom of the walls are cold, which causes condensation to form on them), as opposed to "rising damp".

In short, I consider my cellar to be "average" in terms of humidity/dampness and it's well ventilated, but I don't like storing things down there for any length of time. If I do, I keep things well separated so air can move freely around them. The shelves are spaced away from the walls to allow this. I try to power up my test gear daily to keep it dry, but I only have the essentials down there. During our first summer here a lot of my tools developed surface rust, but since then ventilation has been improved and I've not seen that problem again. Keep an eye on the humidity, and watch out for signs of mould or rot forming on the walls or timbers.

And many modern houses that are practically hermetically sealed can actually be very humid and unhealthy, so a "good" cellar might not be as bad as you think. There's no simple answer...

Mark
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Old 25th Aug 2010, 4:32 pm   #10
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Be carefull when you remove them to a warm climate as condensation will form, so allow time for them to dry out before plugging in.
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 12:41 am   #11
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

The previous house I lived in had a cellar. Anything left on the floor would rot away. Cardboard or wooden boxes disintegrated. Parts of an aerial turned to white crumbly powder.
Anything kept on shelves felt damp to the touch with any metal parts becoming corroded.
I would say that unless your cellar has been damp proofed and is well ventilated then don't leave anything of value down there.

Michael.
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 10:28 am   #12
mhennessy
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Apologies for straying OT, but this has reminded me of a Les Lawry-Johns tale: "Quatermass and the Navvy" from December 1980 - http://www.vintage-radio.info/llj/
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 10:46 am   #13
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

I have been reading some of the above posts with interest, since my workshop is in a cellar about 3/4 mile from home, and things have to be left in there, sometimes for longer than I would like. One wooden Radio cabinet fell apart, but could probably be glued together again, the other, left on the floor under the bench, disintegrated beyond repair.
My AM/FM signal generator(a transistorised/IC one) has ceased to work, despite being on the bench permanently. It's no doubt repairable, but had given maybe 9 or 10 years trouble free service in 3 different above ground premises prior to failure. Papers of various kinds suffer in the way already described of course, even cardboard boxes on a table just inside the door absorb moisture. I, too have had transformers go o/c due to the damp, and have been wondering about getting a dehumidifier, but someone said it might also dry out the mortar. The cellar in question is about 300 years old, built of cotswold stone, with mostly flagstone floors, although some brickwork has been added
I can't easily move things out(no room at home!) Any suggestions as to how to improve matters welcome.
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 11:03 am   #14
cheerfulcharlie
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Water is a very patient and stealthy attacker.
If it's there, it can wait and wait until it attacks when you least expect it.

Might be an idea to get a cheap humidity meter from somewhere like Maplins
and just see what is going on?
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 11:43 am   #15
mhennessy
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

There are two ways to approach a cellar - the first is to work sympathetically with the problem and hope to improve matters sufficiently well while accepting that it will never be as dry as a room above ground. The second is to spend a whole pile of cash on a tanking solution, which isn't always practical, sensible, or even guaranteed to work, and might cause problems elsewhere...

1. is what I've done; increase ventilation, constantly monitor the relative humidity, use heating when I'm working down there, be careful about what I store there... It's not ideal, but it's the best I can do with my cellar.

2. Tanking: there are two routes - (a) involves rendering all surfaces with a mortar that is meant to be impervious to water. This doesn't work in the majority of cases because the render doesn't always stick to soft old bricks, and old buildings move and crack the render. Also, the walls will be very cold and will attract condensation (probably misdiagnosed as "rising damp"). In extreme cases, hydraulic pressures from outside can blow the render from the wall. Talking to people in the trade, this form of tanking is really meant for swimming pools and the like, where the hydraulic pressures work in the right direction. I know someone who has had this done, and the results are not very good - you still can't leave paper down there...

Plan (b) involves installing a cavity drainage membrane (looks a bit like bubblewrap) which allows the water in the walls to emerge and trickle down to the floor. This is attached to the wall with special fixings that maintain the seal - these fixings allow you to attach timber batons to the wall, onto which you fix plasterboard. On the floor itself, a similar membrane (heavier duty, of course) is fixed, and a sump/pump arrangement collects the water and pumps it out. On top of the floor membrane, a timber floor is laid. Obviously, the joints between the various membrane must be properly sealed, and you have to make sure that you don't puncture it when doing jobs like putting up shelves and installing services...

This has a much better chance of working, and is more sympathetic to the fabric of the building. Obviously it reduces the airflow around the walls, so the rate of evaporation is less, meaning that if there is rising or (more likely) penetrating damp, it might cause problems on the floor above (but the cement render solution above is much worse in this regard). Another factor often overlooked is that having gone to the expense of tanking your cellar, you're not going to want to have draughts from the airbricks and coal-chutes coming in, so naturally these all get blocked up. Which means that the ground floor joists and floorboards are at risk of rot and woodworm because they're not properly ventilated any more...

So why haven't I gone down this route? Apart from the cash, my cellar doesn't have the headroom to make it worthwhile - it's exactly my height (made to measure ). There's no prospect of digging down because the foundations of the house only extend 2 bricks below the current floor level, plus the soil is sand, meaning that underpinning would be even more complicated and expensive than usual. But worse than that, the water table is just below the level of the floor - most of the time! I've got a sump/pump to deal with the other times...

Mark
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 12:34 pm   #16
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

In my case The cellar is rented, and I can't see my landlord being prepared to spend the kind of money needed to carry out plan 2 (b) Mark, not, at least, without a hefty rent increase, so it looks like a dehumidifier may be the only option
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 12:38 pm   #17
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Would try and dry line the walls then use a dehumidifier,shouldnt cost mega money that way.Sealer on the walls first,then s/hand timber 3" X 2" fibreglass and foil backed plasterboard.

David
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 2:02 pm   #18
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

Bad plan, although one that's frequently suggested, often by builders! The sealer, if it worked for any length of time, would simply drive the moisture elsewhere - e.g. next door or upstairs. The cold walls would still have condensation forming on them, which would rot the timbers and get into the fibreglass, rendering that useless as an insulator. You might argue that the foil-backed plasterboard would stop moisture-laden air getting though to the walls, but in practice, you won't achieve a perfect seal: a volume of warm humid air creates a "vapour pressure" that will force its way to through a small gap as effectively as the smell of burnt toast permeates the entire house in seconds

That's why tanking is the only effective solution - the seal between the walls/floor and the habitable area must be complete, and the materials on the damp side must be immune to rot.

Unfortunately, I repeat: there's no simple answer.

I'd be interested to hear how the dehumidifier works - in a "marginal" case where the relative humidity is only just above ideal, a dehumidifier might well take the edge off. But, if the cellar is well ventilated, it might not work for the reasons I gave in my initial reply. And if the cellar isn't well ventilated, perhaps that's worth trying first, if possible.

Depending on your relationship with your landlord, there might be grounds for getting your landlord to take action - if you gather data about humidity and start talking about health and safety issues... But of course, he might just evict you and rent the space to someone who wants to store a wine collection down there

Lots of good background reading on this site: http://www.pdoyle.net/
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Old 26th Aug 2010, 4:51 pm   #19
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

If you do go down the dehumidifier route make sure you get a decent one, in my 40x10 workshop which is very well insulated I get about a gallon of water every 4 days, more in the summer than the winter.
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Old 27th Aug 2010, 4:07 pm   #20
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Default Re: Does a damp room damage analogue radios?

I suppose a lot of places are smokeless zones these days but if I had to use a cellar as a workshop I would consider fitting a woodburning stove. As I pointed out before, just a dehumidifier with no heat is not the answer in winter. They work like a fridge, a condenser is cooled so that condensation forms on its surface and drips into a tank or drain pipe. It relies on the condenser being colder than other surfaces in the room which it won't be if the room temperature drops too much. It's a bit like trying to use a fridge freezer in an unheated kitchen. In very cold weather the fridge thermostat will decide that it's cold enough already and won't bother turning on the compressor.
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